Title: The future of WP-CLI
Author: Daniel Bachhuber
Published: June 23, 2016

---

 [  ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/danielbachhuber/) [Daniel Bachhuber](https://profiles.wordpress.org/danielbachhuber/)
12:00 am _on_ June 23, 2016      

# The future of WP-CLI

As you might be aware, WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress,
used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project
page is [http://wp-cli.org/](http://wp-cli.org/) [https://make.wordpress.org/cli/](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/)
is an indispensable tool for many individuals and companies. We very much appreciate
our community of users (although we have no idea how many of you there actually 
are), and want to ensure our relationship is strong for the years to come.

Just over a month ago, I [started a Github issue](https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/issues/2743)
with this question:

>  how do I reduce WP-CLI’s bus factor, and more generally lay a foundation for 
> WP-CLI’s long-term organizational stability?

Although things seem to be going reasonably well now, I want to make sure we’re 
taking steps towards ensuring the long-term continuity of the project. Today, Andreas(
WP-CLI’s founder) and I sat down for breakfast to discuss our options and how we
want to proceed.

Based on our conversation, we think the most important task is to reduce WP-CLI’s
bus factor and onboard one or more additional maintainers to focus on a few non-
code roles:

 * Documentation – Help ensure WP-CLI’s documentation is world-class.
 * Marketing / community management – Help spread the word about WP-CLI.
 * Support – Help WP-CLI users where they’re asking questions, let it be GithubGitHub
   GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that
   can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories
   are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced
   the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors
   can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. [https://github.com/](https://github.com/),
   WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created
   and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress
   core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations
   and organization. [https://wordpress.org/](https://wordpress.org/), Stack Exchange,
   or elsewhere.

Contributions in these areas will always be welcome. Maintainership is a longer-
term commitment to the project, focused on ongoing improvements to the specific 
area. WP-CLI expects its maintainers to commit a few hours per week to the project.

At this time, we don’t have plans to establish a legal WP-CLI organization. We’ve
decided the operational complexities exceed the benefits. While many companies and
individuals want to donate to WP-CLI, introducing money always has the possibility
of causing more harm than good. Instead, we’ll use Kickstarter to fund larger endeavors(
e.g. a logo and website redesign) on an as-needed basis.

If you would like to become a maintainer of WP-CLI in a non-code role, please email
[info@wp-cli.org](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/info@wp-cli.org?output_format=md).
Expect to participate in a trial period of 2-3 months.

We have a Mailchimp mailing list now too. [Sign up](http://wp-cli.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=0615e4d18f213891fc000adfd&id=8c61d7641e)
for email notifications of new versions and occasional announcements about the project.

Thanks,

Daniel Bachhuber, maintainer
 Andreas Creten, founder

### Share this:

 * [  Threads ](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?share=threads)
 * [  Mastodon ](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?share=mastodon)
 * [  Bluesky ](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?share=bluesky)
 * [  Facebook ](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?share=facebook)
 * [  X ](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?share=x)
 * [  LinkedIn ](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?share=linkedin)

 * [Login to Reply](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmake.wordpress.org%2Fcli%2F2016%2F06%2F23%2Ffuture-wp-cli%2F%23respond&locale=en_US)

### Leave a Reply 󠀁[Cancel reply](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/06/23/future-wp-cli/?output_format=md#respond)󠁿

You must be [logged in](https://login.wordpress.org/?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmake.wordpress.org%2Fcli%2F2016%2F06%2F23%2Ffuture-wp-cli%2F&locale=en_US)
to post a comment.

# Post navigation

[← Version 0.23.1 released](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/04/28/version-0-23-1/)

[RESTful WP-CLI – The final update? →](https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2016/07/20/restful-wp-cli-update-4/)